It’s the spring equinox!

Warning: this post is very geeky. And I’m OK with that.

Today is the spring equinox! The spring and autumnal/fall equinoxes are two of my favourite days of the year because on these days the sunlight barrier on the World Sunlight Map runs as a straight line between the poles (like a line of latitude). Here’s a fixed view so you can see what I’m talking about if you’re not reading this post on the equinox. Of course depending on what map projection you’re looking at the barrier may not look perfectly straight but that’s becuase it’s hard to draw a round earth on a flat piece of paper. I find map projections facinating. Maybe I should have been a cartographer. I bet there’s a lot of math in that…

Going back to equinoxes, here’s a fun little bit of information I learnt today. The “equilux” is the day of the year when the length of the day and the length of the night are equal (or as close to equal as they’ll be). Obviously there are spring and fall equiluxes. For this year in Seattle the spring equilux was March 17 when we had 11h 58m 45s of daylight with sunrise at 7:19am and sunset at 7:18pm. Very cool. Apparently, in the northern hemisphere the spring equilux comes before the spring equinox and the fall equilux comes after the fall equinox. Facinating.

And as if this all wasn’t enough excitment for one day today is also my sister’s birthday. Happy Birthday Allison!!